


The One Thing I'd Hoped We'd Never Have In Common.

by pearlydewdrop



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Heartbreak, Tom Branson is a Proud Daddy Bear, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 18:55:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19818454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearlydewdrop/pseuds/pearlydewdrop
Summary: The year was 1945 and tragedy, once again, strikes Downton Abbey.





	The One Thing I'd Hoped We'd Never Have In Common.

**The One Thing I'd Hoped We'd Never Have In Common.**

_1945_

"Sybbie", Tom Branson asked in a panic, ignoring the startled and concerned looks of Mary and Henry from across the breakfast table as he rushed out of dining room on his daughter's trail.

The now twenty five year old had hurried away from the breakfast table and out of the room, clutching a letter. Clearly, she had desperately been trying to hold back her tears-least she break down into a sobbing mess in front of her grandparents, father, aunt and uncle.

But as soon as she believed that she was out of her family's sight, the floodgates came crashing down...

...right alongside the world as she knew it.

Sybbie had known that this may happen. She knew that death was a very real and painful possibility for those who went off to war.

But despite the logical part of her understanding war's harsh reality, she hadn't expected Charlie to be taken from her...not when it was all so close to finally being over.

She placed a protective hand over her stomach and tried not to think too much about what the future would hold...a future that didn't contain Charlie Bryant.

A future where Charlie would never get to marry her or to meet his unborn child...a child she was yet to tell a soul about.

For she had been waiting desperately for her sweetheart to return home to her...to them.

Sybbie's chest heaved painfully at the effort it took to breathe and her stomach felt terribly sick at the idea of him dying alone and frightened in a burning RAF plane that been shot down from the sky.

The thought of dark crimson blood seeping into his flaming red hair, of his hazel eyes wide and glassy and of his once warm and firm body cold and lifeless was enough for her stomach to finally heave and rid itself of her breakfast right in the middle of her grandfather's library.

_No, it couldn't be real! It just couldn't!_

Tom heard her before he saw her, standing at the far end of Robert's study, her shoulders trembling as she gasped for breath.

He didn't need to ask her to know exactly what news that letter contained.

God knows, he knew the look of heartache and loss better than most, it had met him in the mirror every morning after his own wife (and Sybbie's darling mother) passed away.

It was just that true heartache had never been something that Tom had envisioned witnessing on his daughter's face, twenty five years old but still very much his little girl.

The pain of being separated from your love by death was like nothing else. It was the one thing that Tom had hoped he and Sybbie, a daddy's girl right from the beginning, would never ever have in common.

Nothing in a million years could have prepared him for seeing his free-spirited and strong-willed daughter with such brokenness in her eyes.

"Da-", Sybbie said, her voice unsteady and her eyes bloodshot with tears. She didn't want to say it, not out loud and not yet. Saying it out loud would make it real and making it real would be simply unbearable.

"It's Charlie. He's...he's...he's not coming home."

That was all it took for Tom to wrap his arms protectively around his shaking daughter, gathering her up in a comforting embrace like he would when she was a small child suffering from nightmares.

However this nightmare was different. Tom knew from experience that this, the loss of one's love, would prove to be the hardest nightmare of all to wake up from.

His poor little girl. It was an experience he wished to God she had been saved from.

But fate was cruel, Tom knew that better than anyone.

"Sssssh, darlin'. We'll get through it."

* * *

**Please leave me a review, let me know what you thought!**

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave me a review, let me know what you thought!


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